Wales got hit last year when contract manufacturer AMRI ($AMRI) decided to close down a plant and lay off more than 60 workers. But that number of jobs and more will be added to the life sciences manufacturing sector in Wales as packager Essentra builds a new plant focused on secondary packaging for pharma products.
Essentra announced this week that it will add a second plant at its site in Newport that will initially create 70 jobs, bringing its total employment there to more than 130. The Welsh government is pitching in $565,500 on the project (£400,000). It said that the plant will do packaging for pharmaceutical, health, as well as for the personal care and consumer good sectors.
Essentra didn't say exactly how much it is spending on the plant, calling the new facility a "multi-million pound investment" that would result in a six-fold increase in its footprint in Newport. The expansion comes only two years after Essentra opened its initial 52,000-square-foot facility there. It bought an adjacent facility where the latest expansion will be installed.
U.S. CMO AMRI closed an API manufacturing site in Holywell, Wales, last year. That closure resulted in the loss of 62 jobs.
- here's the announcement